Today we’re interviewing Caroline Cotto, COO and Co-Founder of Renewal Mill. I’ve wanted Caroline on for a long time cause I think Renewal Mill is a super cool company that’s always doing amazing things. We’ve met a multitude of times during conferences and it’s always nice seeing her.
In this interview, we talk about how Caroline dove into the food industry, her try-all journey at Renewal Mill, and you learn a lot about Upcycling, how it’s evolved in the past few years, and a new and trending certification that shows upcycled food in bright light.
About Caroline
Caroline Cotto is the Co-Founder & COO of Renewal Mill, a venture-backed startup upcycling the byproducts of food manufacturing into premium ingredients and delicious plant-based products. A food marketing and nutrition specialist, Caroline has experience at the UN World Food Programme, the White House (for Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! initiative), Techstars Farm to Fork Accelerator, and HubSpot, where she ran the women’s diversity program globally. Caroline grew up in food, working for her family’s ice cream business in the town of Sandwich, MA. She serves as the inaugural Board President of the Upcycled Food Association, and formerly served as a Fulbright Fellow in Taiwan. In 2022, she was named to Forbes 30 Under 30, and the 50 Best’s 50 NEXT lists.
Show Notes
West Oakland
Hodo Tofu
Nona Lim
Ocho Chocolate
Upcycled Foods Association
IFT Competitons
Renewal Mill’s Pivot
Okara as a raw material
Then B2B catering
Then baking mix
Then now snacking
Okara is a traditional ingredient
Okonomiyaki with Okara
Miyoko used to do an Okara poundcake
Permaculture in Italy
Techstars in Minnesota
Food Systems Six
Good Food Makers with Barilla
ICA Fund out of Oakland
Cookie with Miyoko’s
Upcycled Food Certification
Who’s doing Upcycling?
Life Updates
I’m currently in Singapore. It’s hot, humid and I got sick! I’m also having trouble getting cash. Life’s great!
So what’s really saved me was some advice from a friend who I visited. There’s this super app called Grab that’s apparently dominating Singapore and all of South East Asia. It’s essentially Uber, so I use it to order food. Yea, sure, there’s a delivery fee, but for me, it’s worth it not going out.
I plan to go out and explore but jesus it’s hard. The heat really saps a lot of your strength.
Ok. Let’s talk about some food news. A slew of data has been published on Oat Milk!
So from what I understand, Oak Milk is gaining market share but it seems like the most popular oat milk company is having some trouble.
Top contender Oatly, which is known for its scale-up problems also posted their financials and it doesn’t look very good. What’s worse is that Oatly’s copacker is suffering from some food safety issues and being recalled among other products.
To note, Dollar sales of refrigerated liquid #plantbased creams and creamers were up +25.8% year-on-year to $527.4m in measured US retail channels in the year to July 10, 2022, while unit sales were up +16.1%, according to new data from SPINS. Thanks Elaine Watson from Food Navigator for those numbers.
Oatly’s US revenues rose 25.2% to $51.8m in the quarter, said the firm, which claims to be the fastest-turning national brand in the US fluid milk category (dairy and plant-based), with velocities outpacing those of the “largest plant-based milk brand.”
Oatly posted a $72m net loss on net revenues up 21.8% to $178m in the second quarter of 2022, with gross profit margins of just 15.8%, a figure CEO Toni Petersson insisted would rise over time as the firm improved operating efficiencies. The stock tanked double digits.
Ok so what does that mean? I’m not a finance guy so I can only give a product perspective. In a product perspective, many things. One, this product is apparently hard to make, but it’s co-packable according to the food safety outbreak.
Two, they are suffering from supply chain issues especially from Ukraine which means they are sourcing oats internationally, yea makes sense.
Three, other competitors are starting to pop out to get market share. Similar story with Beyond Meat, people eventually figure out your formula. Maybe not 100%, but making it good enough which is eating up market share.
Oatly predicts that Oat milk won’t grow as fast as they thought which is probably true. Personally? Oatly seems to have an operational problem.
As everyone knows, food forecasting is really hard and everyone expects you to get into an exponential sales curve and when you’re being bombabraded with so many inputs like supply chain, recession and market forces, things become a lot harder to forecast.
I tend to look at food trends as ecosystems and even the king of the jungle can get killed by a more ambitious competitor, famine or disease. It’s good that the category is rising, but Oatly to me is just another animal that is at a tipping point where it’s hard to predict if it’ll be feast for them, or famine. Either way, it’ll get taken over by another oat milk player and well, life goes on doesn’t it?
End of the Show
Let’s talk about Passion. You know, My Food Job Rock’s motto? Share your passion for food.
A lot of people say “don’t follow your passion”. To a degree, I think this is true. Because without proper understanding on what makes you happy, I think you can fall through the wrong trail. You can become disillusioned and discouraged.
So recently, I’ve read about lying flat… it’s a Chinese thing so I’ll just say just not putting effort in work. People who say “it’s not my job” or just want to do the bare minimum. It’s not a life I want to live, but why do a lot of people want to live this life?
I think about Caroline’s time at Renewal Mill, who has to solve every problem, wear multiple hats, and try a lot of things because she loves doing it.
And then I think about a few people I’ve worked with who say “it’s not my job” or, “I shouldn’t fix this, it’s not my problem”.
I’m not going to tell you to live your life, but in my opinion, a life worth living is following what makes you happy, and then doubling down on it. I probably have an issue in that I like working too much.
You’re going to be faced with a lot of options in life that will require sacrifice one way or another. You can either go ham on your career, spending weekends making podcast episodes, or just working more than 40 hours at work, or be stagnating that after work, you’re trying to find escapism on TV or on your phone.
But finding what makes you happy is really hard and it takes a lot of reflection and introspection. Most people live their lives not finding it, but those that have, I feel are more productive because they want to be productive.
What helps me find my passion is a slow understanding of what truly makes me happy. This generally involves a period of intense sadness. I just had to reminisce every job I’ve done, and in the process, what really made me happy? Is it developing the idea? Is it talking to people? Going to Expos? Tasting food? The launch party? Making money? The optimization piece to get those little numbers up? I played the scenarios in my head, and once I got to the thing that makes me happy, I started to glow.
And I learned, it’s creating things. Once I found that out, and once I started to follow that feeling, that’s what made my life worth living.